Web developer in Bristol: a site for a shop, maker or food business
I build small, quick sites for Bristol shops, makers and food businesses. My first question as a web developer in Bristol is who you buy from, and my second is who's worked behind the counter longest. Both get named on your site, with your say-so and theirs.
Overview
The details you'd never think to mention
When I write a shop's site, I start with the details its owner finds too ordinary to say out loud.
None of it sounds like marketing to you. To a customer deciding where to shop, those details tell them who they'd be buying from.
The rest is ordinary craft. The site opens quickly on a phone, and it says clearly where you are and when you're open.
What gets built here
Four questions for the owner
I turn your answers into sentences, and you check every one before it is published.
- 01Who you buy from — the supplier's name, and why you chose them
- 02Who works there — how long your longest-serving person has been with you, and what they'd tell a new customer
- 03What you refuse to stock — and the reason, in your own words
- 04Where the waste goes — if you've set something up for it, it belongs on the site
What moves the number
How much there is to build
Products with a page of their own are the main factor.
- 01Products with their own pageeach one gets its own photographs and a few lines in your words
- 02A map and directions pageif customers come to the door
- 03A page on your sourcing or your wasteonly if you have enough to say for a page of its own
- 04Online orderingonly if you want customers to buy through the site
- 05An existing sitekeeping the addresses that already bring visitors
What a scope from me looks like
A sample scope for a small shop
This sample is for a shop, maker or food business. Every line on it can change once you have read it.
Included
- A written scope: every page and feature as its own line, agreed before work starts
- Design to build, reviewed on a staging URL that stays open the whole project
- Mobile first — checked on a real phone
- Domain, hosting and every account created in your name from day one
- Your own answers, written up for you to check line by line
- Your own phone photographs, sized and placed
- Basic on-page SEO: titles, descriptions, headings, sitemap, Search Console connected
- A runbook at handover: how to edit it, what renews and when
Phase two
- A newsletter sign-up, if you want to tell regulars what's new
- Online ordering, if you decide to sell through the site
- Ongoing SEO once the site has traffic to read
- A maintenance plan once the site is live
- Logo and brand design, quoted separately from the build
Not doing
- Guaranteed rankings
- Naming a supplier or a member of staff without their agreement
One named supplier near the top
Your home page carries one supplier's name, high up. You choose which one.
Where this comes from
My side of the counter
My own count stands at 900+ projects completed since 2017. On the projects page you will find UK clients who gave their consent to be named, each with their own review.
I'm based in Kolkata, India, and I lead every build. We talk over video, and you check each page on a staging link before it's live.
Nearby
Still in the UK
Naming every town a trade serves is the subject of the Birmingham page. For Scottish legal terms on a site, open the Glasgow one.
FAQ
Settling the details of a shop's site
Each of these comes down to what you are happy to show.
Should a shop hide the products it buys in?
- Bought-in products are nothing to hide. A customer who asks where something comes from gets a straight answer, and the lines you make yourself stand out beside them. Each product page says which is which.
Are phone photographs good enough for a local shop website?
- Phone photographs of your own shop are good enough when they're sharp and taken in daylight. I size them so they load quickly on a phone. Pictures of the counter, the shelves and the door from the street are the ones I would put first.
Does somebody need to be technical to run the site?
- Nobody on your team needs to be technical. Changing a photo or the opening times happens in the editor, and the handover guide walks through each step.
Is a small site enough for a shop?
- A small site is enough for a shop that sells mainly in person. It needs a handful of pages covering what you sell and where to find you. More pages can follow when there's something new to say.
What if nothing about the shop feels remarkable?
- An ordinary shop has plenty to write about. The facts you'd call too dull to mention are the ones I ask for, such as what you will not sell and why. You check each sentence I make of them.
Can staff photos and names go on the site?
- Staff photos and names go on the site only with each person's agreement. Anyone who prefers to stay off it simply does, and nobody else needs to know why.
Next step
A video call about your shop
On the call, walk me round the shop on your phone. I'll ask about whatever we pass, and the first draft of your pages comes out of that conversation. You correct whatever I get wrong.
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